Page 1 of Ebbing Tides (The Lighthouse Duology #2)

TEN YEARS LATER

SUNDAY

For as long as I could remember, I’d been a sunrise guy.

Watching those stripes of purple, orange, blue, and rose stretch across the sky, peeking between the clouds as the sun lifted from the darkness of night …

it felt like a hug, like somewhere out there, someone was telling me that everything would one day, eventually, be okay.

Because it was a new day and I was somehow still here.

But Laura had loved sunsets.

It was funny, thinking about that now.

She had always made time to watch the sunrise with me.

Not every single day, no. Sometimes, she was too busy getting Lizzie and Jane—her daughters from her first marriage—ready for school or too tired from being up all night because someone couldn’t sleep or someone was sick.

Sometimes, it was just that she needed the extra rest from worrying about everything for everyone else.

But the fact was, she made the time when she was able to. She made an effort .

She’d come out here on the deck and stare out over the water with me nearly every morning during our short time of living in this house together.

She didn’t like coffee, so she drank her tea—something else I’d always teased her about—and we’d sit quietly, listening as the world came alive around us.

The birds sang. The water rippled. The girls chattered softly inside the house behind us, eating their breakfast and watching their TV shows.

Then she’d say something about how she wished we’d gotten a house with a better view of the sunset. I’d say something like, Ha-ha, maybe in our next life , and she’d kiss the top of my head, getting as close as her pregnant belly allowed, before going inside to get the kids ready for the day.

I’d sit here, in this chair, finishing the dregs of coffee in my cup. Not thinking about much, not even wanting to because there’d be enough to think about later on.

“I should’ve thought more about her sunsets and tea,” I muttered to the morning, too tired for my words to come out in anything more than a dull murmur.

My black Labrador, Lido, sat up, suddenly alert at the sound of my voice. His nails scrabbled against the deck boards as he stretched—first his hind legs, then his front—and he walked over to rest his chin on my knee.

I scrubbed my palm against the top of his head, scratching behind his floppy ears.

“Come on, boy,” I said as I stood from the old creaking chair. “Let’s go to bed.”

But before I went in, I made sure to touch the chair beside it, as I always did.

Forever empty, forever waiting.

***

I woke up a little after three in the afternoon. Too late . I was only supposed to take a quick nap in the comfort of my own home before going about my day.

It’s okay , I told myself. I still had plenty of time to take the dog for a quick walk, grab something for dinner, and tend to Dad for a while before heading to work for the night, where I would make sure to acknowledge the sunset, even if just in passing.

“Come on, Lido,” I said to my roommate and best friend as I headed down the hall from my bedroom to the front door, where his leash was hanging.

I didn’t need to tell him what we were doing.

Our life together had been forged on routine, and he already knew what was coming, tail wagging and tongue lolling out of his mouth as he bounded past me to the door.

I chuckled and shook my head. Thank God for dogs.

Thank God for their ability to make even the simplest of things a reason to wake up and smile.

Like sunrises and sunsets.

With his leash clipped to his collar, I grabbed my baseball cap from the hook I always kept it on, beside the empty ones once used by the family I had shared my home with.

A good woman. Her two little girls, who, at one point, had called me Papa, and I’d had the privilege of calling them mine.

It had been nine years, eleven months, and twenty-six days since I’d lost them all.

Some days, it felt like yesterday, and others, a lifetime.

I wasn’t sure which I preferred, if you could prefer such a thing.

Fresh, open, throbbing wounds or a dull, persistent, annoying ache.

But right now, as I looked at their picture beside the door—the only one we had taken as a family in this house, the only picture we’d managed to get while Laura was pregnant with our son—the grief came as a heavy fullness, flooding my chest and crowding my heart and lungs until I was sure I’d lose the ability to breathe altogether.

I would be okay. I was always okay, eventually.

I made sure of it because I had made a promise to never find myself on the edge of that proverbial cliff again.

But it had been such a long time since that terrible day in late February, and through the years, I’d learned the best thing was to allow myself to ride the waves.

To let the sadness steamroll over me until I was wrung out and ready to push past it.

So, I pressed my forehead to the door, blew out a shaky breath, and let my eyes close as a tear fell from my eye to the floor as I imagined her smile.

The way she’d laughed. The way she’d smelled after a shower.

I played her voice in my head, ensuring that I hadn’t forgotten, grateful that time hadn’t stolen that from me yet.

Lido waited at my feet, nudging his wet nose into my palm. I smoothed my hand over his square head and ruffled his soft, smooth ears.

“You’re a good boy,” I reminded him, clearing my throat as the wave passed, and with a sigh, I put on baseball cap and opened the door.

I lived on a quiet street in suburban Massachusetts, not too far from Salem, where I worked my nights away.

Fifteen minutes, twenty tops if there was a little traffic.

I loved this house, this street, and although my sisters often insisted I move closer to them after everything changed, I never did.

Why would I want to leave the place where I had spent the best months of my life? A year after the accident, Grace and Lucy had asked if it was too painful to be reminded of them— Laura, the baby, and the girls—all the time … but what was the alternative? To forget ?

I would never allow myself to forget them, no matter how painful it often was to remember.

But I never faulted my sisters or their husbands—my best friends, Sid and Ricky—for caring, even if they were, at times, a bit …

suffocating. I guessed they felt like they owed me, after I spent so many years caring for them, but as the oldest, living under my father’s reign of terror, wasn’t that my job?

Anyway, I loved this street. Loved my neighbors even.

Ten years ago, I hadn’t had many of them on this bit of shoreline, but ten years was a long time, and there were now a few more houses where there once had been none.

And right now, I looked across the road to see little Jack Douglas standing at the end of his driveway behind a table of model cars.

A sign reading CARS FOR SALE , written in his appropriately sloppy handwriting, was taped to the table.

Lido walked easily beside me as I headed over.

“Jack, I didn’t know you were in the used car business,” I called, squinting at him beneath the brim of my hat.

The sunlight glinted off the piles of remaining snow, banked at the sides of his driveway. He looked up and smiled at me, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. The kid looked like he was freezing, even in his snow boots and winter coat.

“My dad said I could get a new video game if I could pay for half,” he explained, his eyes now on the table of cars.

“How much have you made so far?” I asked, pulling my wallet from my pocket.

Jack’s already-rosy cheeks darkened in hue. “Um … my grandma gave me five dollars.”

“Hmm.”

I loosened my hold on Lido’s leash, and with his new bit of found freedom, he rounded the table to lean his eighty-pound body against the kid’s legs.

Jack was thrown off-balance, damn near knocked over altogether, and he laughed as he got down on his knees to wrap his arms around the big dog’s thick neck, ruffling the fur along his back.

“Nice selection you have here,” I complimented, scanning over the display of cars. “You built all of these yourself?”

“Not all of them,” Jack replied. “Some of them are Luke’s, but he doesn’t want them anymore.”

Luke was Jack’s older brother by two, maybe three years.

I didn’t know for sure how old Luke was, but I knew Jack must’ve been eight, maybe nine.

Had life not happened the way it did, I would’ve had a son about his age.

Maybe they would’ve been friends. I would’ve liked that.

Jack was a good kid, the kind you wouldn’t mind your own kids hanging out with.

I picked up a black Dodge Ram. The driver’s door was a bit scuffed, but it was otherwise in nice condition.

“This was my first truck,” I mused, turning it over in my hand as I thought about the adventures I’d been on in that old truck.

The drives from the base in New Jersey to Revere.

Hanging out with my sisters during my brief stints home from the Army.

The flat tire in Connecticut that had led to one memorable dinner with a woman I could never forget.

Melanie .

I held the car up and asked, “How much for this one?”

“Um … ten dollars?” Jack asked, uncertain, as he stood up, his hands never leaving Lido’s wriggling body.

I opened my wallet and thumbed through my cash. “How much more do you need for your video game?”

“I dunno,” he muttered shamefully. “Probably, like, thirty dollars or something like that.”

“All right.” I took out two twenties. “How about this? I’ll buy the truck and give you forty bucks. Next time it snows, you come shovel my driveway, and we’ll call ourselves even. Deal?”

I handed over the bills, but he didn’t take them from me right away. He just stared, wide-eyed.

“Really?”

“Yep.” I nodded, nudging my hand toward him.